


Temperature's High and It's Climbing

by Kalcifer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Other, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 09:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24349069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer/pseuds/Kalcifer
Summary: To avoid attention, the Chime decides to drive halfway around the planet by car. It's a great plan that definitely won't end with any of them strangling each other.
Relationships: AuDy & Cassander Timaeus Berenice & Aria Joie & Mako Trig, Cassander Timaeus Berenice/Mako Trig
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Temperature's High and It's Climbing

**Author's Note:**

> I always talk about enjoying writing the Chime talking in circles without doing anything, and apparently I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

The Chime stared at the vehicle they’d be commandeering for the next week. They’d been warned ahead of time that it would be cramped. They were supposed to blend in with the crowds traveling for Golden Week, after all, and most suburban families couldn’t afford starships, even ones as run down as the _Kingdom Come_.

But life on a campus or in a theme park or as a scion hadn’t come with many opportunities to see how suburban families did get around, and it had never seemed important to life as dashing criminals. The idea that there wouldn’t even be room to stand hadn’t occurred to any of them.

They also weren’t familiar with the customs surrounding this sort of vehicle, so when AuDy announced, “Shotgun,” the other three went into vague approximations of combat stances.

“I don’t see anything,” Aria said, scanning the parking lot.

Cass’ hand hovered over their bag, reluctant to blow their cover if there wasn’t an immediate threat. “Where were they?” they asked AuDy.

“Maybe we scared them off,” Mako suggested.

“No.” AuDy’s voice was the pleasant monotone they used when their crew were being idiots but in ways that wouldn’t affect AuDy. “I am asserting my right to sit in the front seat. You all will have to sit in the back.”

“Oh.” Cass’ hand dropped back to their side. “Sure? I don’t see why you had to threaten us for it, though.”

Predictably, AuDy didn’t respond, heading directly for the driver’s side door. Cass rolled their eyes and began loading luggage into the boot. This task was made simpler by the team’s earlier agreement to keep their weapons on them, which meant the rest could be thrown in haphazardly without fear of the car exploding at the first pothole.

The advantage to loading the boot was that they could ignore the argument Aria and Mako were getting into. “Look, you’re the shortest of us,” Aria was saying. “It makes sense for you to be in the middle. My legs would get all cramped.”

“You know as well as I do that I’m going to start fidgeting like five minutes in, Aria,” Mako said, showing more self-awareness than he’d usually admit to. “Do you really want me elbowing you for the entire day? Because I will.”

“You can try.”

“You think you can stop me? That just means I’m going to do it even harder.” Mako knew as he was saying it that it was a weird boast, but he couldn’t have his position as Most Obnoxious Member of the Chime threatened in this way.

Aria smiled so suddenly that Mako knew he’d made a mistake. “Oh, good, so you want to be in the middle after all?”

“I can also elbow you if you’re in the middle.” Mako crawled into the middle seat anyway. Once Aria was convinced of her victory, it was only worth arguing with her about things that really mattered, like what color the team logo should be. Not all of them had to worry about matching a burgundy mech, and flashy colors were just more fun. The fact that they had yet to apply the logo to anything meant nothing.

Cass, hearing that the argument was over, stopped pretending to rearrange the bags and slammed the boot shut. This was a great start to what would surely be a speedy and painless trip.

It wasn’t until they were getting into the car that they realized what the real problem was. As previously noted, it was not a large vehicle. For the three organic members of the Chime to fit in the back, Cass would be pressed right up against Mako. Mako, the person Cass… had feelings for, to put it in a way that didn’t make them feel like a six-year-old watching the ambassador’s child from across the room, wondering if they wanted to hear about their new toys. (It didn’t help. Cass didn’t exactly have a wide pool of romantic experience to pull from.)

Still, this would be fine. All Cass had to do was ignore the way their hand was practically brushing Mako’s, the fact that they were close enough to see his freckles, the ease with which they could lean in and do something they’d regret, and it would be fine.

AuDy adjusted the driver’s seat. The motions would have been muscle memory if they’d had muscles. They’d intentionally gotten a car without self-driving capabilities, both to prevent the team being tracked and to ensure that they got to sit in the front. For a trip taking place on the highways as much as this one was, they were basically a self-driving system in their own right. 

They set a fraction of their awareness to monitoring the road in case an unexpected complication arose, another fraction to listening in on their crew in case an entirely expected complication arose, and devoted the rest to a mental game of Solitaire.

In the back, Aria pulled up her bracelet’s display, figuring that she might as well check the latest industry news. A headline about the terrible costumes in the latest EarthHome drama crept into existence. What was wrong with the costumes, she didn’t know, since the image refused to load.

She frowned and turned to the interior of the car. “Is it just me or is the Mesh super slow right now?”

“Yeah, it’s like staring at a wall,” Mako said. “We should have sprung for one of those fancy extender things you can attach to the roof of the car.”

“That would ensure that our exact location was available to any corporation that wanted it,” AuDy said.

“Okay, first of all, just because you’re too much of a hipster to use the Mesh doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer.” Mako crossed his arms. “And second, did you forget who you’re talking to? I’d feed them some fake data and send them halfway across the planet.”

“They’d know where we rented it, being somewhere else would be suspicious,” Cass said. “It’s too late to argue about it now anyway. Can’t you watch a movie or something?”

Of course Mako could watch a movie, but it went against his personal code of honor to suffer a minor inconvenience without complaining about it at length. To that end, he sighed loudly. “I guess, but I was planning to use this time to catch up on all those dumb quizzes I’ve been bookmarking.”

“Same!” Aria brightened momentarily before remembering the conversation they were in the middle of. “Can’t you, like, hack into the cell signal and boost it so it’s like we’ve got an extender thing?”

“Not from all the way out here. We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. If you could get me to a cell tower…”

“What you are describing is the opposite of laying low.” Cass had one earbud in and was holding the other optimistically by their ear. “It’s one week, please tell me you can hang on for that long.”

“I don’t know, I think I might explode if I can’t find out which of the domes I am.”

“Oh, I took that one and got Dome 63.” Aria shook her head. It hadn’t been a very good quiz – too much choosing colors with no idea what effect they had on your result, and then the description at the end only had two lines. If she was going to be completely misread, she at least wanted a proper description of the person she supposedly was.

“This is a pointless conversation.” AuDy dragged the two of diamonds to the next pile over. “We are not getting a Mesh extender installed. Find a different way to entertain yourselves. One that will not distract me from the task of keeping us from getting into a fatal collision.” The chances of a collision were low even if AuDy for some reason couldn’t spare the sliver of their attention needed to avoid it, but sometimes extreme tactics were needed to convince their crew to behave.

As expected, there was another round of protests that gradually subsided as everyone started their preferred form of media. AuDy could see the flickering light of Aria’s bracelet display, but it was nothing that concerned them, so they were free to return their focus to their game.

What Aria had pulled up was EarthHome’s latest show about a group of girls trying to make it as idols. This was perhaps a mistake, as the show’s representation of the music industry frequently drove her to yelling at the screen, but the songs were catchy and the girls were friends, so she was invested despite herself.

Mako meanwhile had gotten out a game console. This decision was only partly motivated by contrariness. His biggest priority was having something to occupy his hands and justify elbowing Aria at semi-regular intervals. Which, now that he thought about it, was maybe also being contrary? But in a more fun and self-aware way than just not doing what Cass suggested.

Less fun was the way that Aria accepted the prodding without acknowledgment. Her expression barely even changed. Mako decided to take that as a challenge and increase the amount of force he was using. It meant encroaching on Cass’ space a little, but he was sure they wouldn’t mind.

Cass of course minded very much. From their perspective, he was leaning against their shoulder out of nowhere. It was the sort of thing that was very nice when it happened while watching movies or at the end of missions when no one had to address it, and much less pleasant in the early morning as he prepared to launch an attack against a member of their team. “Would you get off of me?”

“Hold on, I need to get this right.” Mako looked like he was actually concentrating on this ridiculous plan of his. It was stupid, it was inconsiderate, and Cass really needed to stop staring at the determined set of his mouth.

They grumbled to themself, as annoyed by their own easily swayed brain as by whatever Mako was doing. They watched as he used the momentum from a curve in the road to fling himself at Aria. The collision jostled her and sent her screen off into nowhere. “Ack!”

Mako cackled.

Aria shot him a look. “What are you, five?”

“I warned you! It’s not my fault if you didn’t believe me.”

“Okay, that was not elbowing and you know it.”

“I used my elbow, so it counts.”

“Whatever acts of stupidity you’re engaging in back there, do it more quietly,” AuDy said.

Cass groaned. They hadn’t even been on the road for an hour, and they still had a week of this to go. It was going to be the most trying mission they’d ever had.

* * *

Two hours later, AuDy was pulling into a refueling station, despite still having half a tank of fuel. Mako was pretty sure they wanted an excuse to get everyone out of the car. He couldn’t blame them. He also didn’t care, because here was his chance to buy snacks.

He announced his intentions, and Aria perked up. “Great idea. We’ll come too.”

“Actually, I’m fine,” Cass said. Aria dragged them to the rest area anyway, only letting go of their arm when it was clear they weren’t resisting.

Her sudden fervor for snacks was explained as soon as they were out of sensorshot of the car. “There’s no way AuDy needs the entire front seat to themself, right?”

“They did call it, though.” They may have been criminals, but some rules were vital to the structure of the universe. If they stopped honoring the sacred act of calling dibs, where would they draw the line?

“They didn’t call it again after we stopped, though.” Aria snapped her fingers. “Speaking of which… handgun, was it?”

“There’s no way that’s right,” Cass said.

“But if we get AuDy to say what it really is, we can both be witnesses to say that’s what Aria called.” It was shaky, since AuDy wasn’t around to defend their claim, but Mako could live with it in the name of having leg room.

“Exactly,” Aria said.

“Sure, but we can’t keep doing this every time we stop.” A thought occurred to Cass. It gave them vivid flashbacks to having to share a training mech with Sokrates, but hopefully it would stop their being used as a launching pad again. “How about we draw up a schedule for it?”

“Really?” Mako asked flatly.

“Come on, I’m sure we don’t need to go that far.”

Cass gave Aria a look that invited her to review every fight for space they’d had on the _Kingdom Come_ and scale those down to the confines of the car.

“…Fine. I still get it for the rest of today, though.”

“I get it tomorrow, then,” Cass said.

“You guys both suck.” Mako didn’t actually have a problem with waiting, but he wanted to register his lack of amusement. “I’m going to see what kinds of chips they have.”

Aria and Cass trailed after him as he rifled through the shelves of snack foods. They had to present a united front for this plan to work, and Aria wanted a crappy pre-packaged smoothie anyway.

When they’d made their purchases and peer-pressured Cass into buying some snack cakes, they headed back for the car. AuDy was already firmly installed in the driver’s seat. Aria slid into the seat next to them.

“Aria,” AuDy said.

“I called it.” Aria punctuated the statement with a sip of her smoothie. It looked super cool, in her unbiased opinion.

AuDy turned to the back seat. Cass and Mako, sitting a respectable distance apart, made vague noises of support. Mako gave a thumbs up.

AuDy returned their attention to the road and didn’t press the issue. Aria, rightly taking this as a victory, put her headphones on and brought her show back up. She was about to find out whether the oldest member would abandon the group for a solo career.

Mako considered kicking the back of Aria’s seat, but he didn’t have a good reason now that he had personal space again, and he didn’t want to rob it of its impact. He’d keep it in his back pocket for the next time he wanted to irritate her.

Cass took a moment to close their eyes and repress every emotion they’d felt over the last two hours. It was something they were well-practiced in. Once that was taken care of, they put in their earbuds and stared out the window to the soothing sounds of the synthesizer.

* * *

In AuDy’s mind, one of the major benefits of being a pilot was that they no longer had to park cars. Suddenly doing it several times a day was frustrating, even knowing the situation was temporary. The others weren’t doing much better. By the time they made it to the hotel for the night, all four of them were exhausted.

In an ideal world, they would have gone off in four separate directions to gather the energy to face another six days in close quarters. On Counterweight, where not ideals but money was the deciding factor in most decisions, they shuffled into a pair of adjacent hotel rooms. 

Mako and Aria were no longer allowed to share a room after they decided to “liberate” a pet store’s worth of iguanas, and Aria’s tendency to get giggly when she was tired did not pair well with Cass’ desire to spend the evening winding down as best they could, so by longstanding agreement Aria shared a room with AuDy and Cass with Mako. 

It was less of a problem for Cass than one might have expected. They already lived on the same ship, so Cass was more than familiar with the way Mako’s hair stuck up at the back right after he woke up or the sound of his mumble-singing in the shower. It had lost any sway it may once have held over them. Why else would they be able to pull those examples off the top of their head?

For his part, Mako mostly just enjoyed hanging out with Cass when they were tired and had less of a filter. It was easy to goad them into talking about the dumb stunts they’d pull and then not tell anyone about. Judging by the way they threw themself into the storytelling, Mako was even doing them a favor by providing an audience.

That night, though, neither of them were really in the mood for stories. Cass brought up a trivia show on the TV and half-heartedly played along while Mako loaded up on pirated movies and TV.

They turned out the light at what Mako considered a ridiculously early hour, because Cass wanted to check out the complementary breakfast and it closed at 8. Mako didn’t want breakfast, but Cass was terrible at being quiet first thing in the morning, and it was easier to wake up with them than listen to slamming doors and hissed annoyance for half an hour. He could steal a muffin for later, probably.

He did spend another two hours staring at his phone screen in the dark, but it wasn’t like he had to be awake during the drive itself. He was making great decisions.


End file.
